Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens oppose the sell-off of Medibank Private. We do so because we do not want to see further privatisation of health care in this country. We are proud and vocal supporters of the public health care system in this country, and we want to see the federal government prioritise and invest in public health care in this country. But it is not just the federal government that we want to see do that; it is the opposition too. Instead what we have is the government, with the support of the opposition—with the support of the new deputy leader of the Labor Party, the shadow minister for health—spending over $3 billion of public funds every year subsidising people’s private health insurance. Instead of investing that over-$3 billion of public funds each year in our public health system, we see them subsidising people’s private health insurance.

In speaking to the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006 today, I offer a challenge to the new deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party. Does she support investing public funds in our public health care system? Will the new deputy leader and the new Leader of the Opposition continue to support pouring public health funds, taxpayers’ dollars, into subsidising the private health insurance that is taken up predominantly by Liberal Party voters in wealthy electorates like that of the Minister for Health and Ageing, Mr Abbott? Will this new Labor dream team continue to support pouring over $3 billion of public funds into subsidising people’s private health insurance, rather than delivering public health outcomes and public health services for the millions of Australians across this country who need that support?

That is the challenge I offer today to this new Labor team. What is their commitment to public health care? Do they believe in and will they take to the next election a policy that echoes the one that the Greens have been calling for for years, which is a prioritising of investment in our public health services? That $3 billion is sitting there. It is taxpayers’ money. It is in our budget for health care, and it is not being spent that way. It is currently being spent subsidising the people in wealthier electorates who take out private health insurance.

Later in my speech, I will go into the figures for people who take out private health insurance and whose electorates they live in. To give you a snapshot: they live in the electorate of Tony Abbott on the northern beaches. The member for Warringah has the highest uptake of private health insurance. So the people in his electorate—the people with the highest uptake of private health insurance—get the largest proportion of any electorate of that over $3 billion that the government and the opposition support using to subsidise people’s private health insurance. They get those public funds—not the people in the electorate of Lalor, where the new Deputy Leader of the Opposition comes from, where only 36.6 per cent of people have any access to those public funds which are put into our budget to be spent on public health services. That is one of the lowest percentages we see around the country.

Effectively, the current position of the opposition on this issue is to support subsidising the private health insurance of those people who live in wealthy electorates like that of the health minister, Mr Abbott, so that they get that access to public funds rather than those people who live in Labor electorates like that of the new Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the member for Lalor. They are not getting access to those funds. So the challenge today for the new deputy leader of the Labor Party is: are you going to support the 64 per cent of people in your electorate who rely on the public health care system? Are you going to take to the next federal election a policy which says that that over $3 billion of public funds—contributed by taxpayers for health services in this country—will be spent on public health care?

Do you have a commitment to public health care in this country, or are you going to continue with the existing policy of the opposition, which is to spend that over $3 billion subsidising the private health insurance of those people who live in wealthy Liberal electorates—to ensure that they get access to those public funds and to ensure that they get support and subsidy for their private health insurance—rather than investing it in the public health care services of this country? The challenge on day one for the new Deputy Leader of the Opposition is: do you support the public health system of this country or are you going to continue to pour money into subsidising the private insurance bought by people in Liberal-held electorates and wealthy electorates of this country—electorates like that of Minister Abbott?

That is central to this issue in the piece of legislation that we are dealing with today. This piece of legislation is about a particular private health insurance operator. If this proposed legislation goes ahead in the sell-off of Medibank Private, we will see premiums going up—and I will get onto some of that detail later. Every time private health insurance premiums go up so too does the amount of public funds that are put into the private health insurance rebate to subsidise the private health insurance of wealthy people, in predominantly Liberal-held electorates, who take out private health insurance. Every time we see premiums go up we also see—and we must see—an increase in the rebate that is paid. Public funds are being spent on subsidising private health insurance rather than being invested in public health care, and that is what we will see if this legislation goes ahead.

The opposition can stand up and oppose this legislation, as do the Greens, but the question is: when it comes to the issue of the private health insurance rebate, does this new opposition dream team, including the member for Lalor, continue to support spending over $3 billion of public funds on subsidising the private health insurance of those people who live in wealthy Liberal electorates like that of Minister Abbott? Eighty-six per cent of people in Minister Abbott’s electorate get access to these public funds which should be spent on public health care. Only 36 per cent of people in the electorate of Lalor have any access to public funds which should be earmarked for public health care. I will be seeking to move amendments in the process of dealing with this legislation and to say yet again that the Greens’ priority when it comes to public money being spent on health care is to invest that money in our public health system. We do not want to see more money every year—it is up to over $3 billion now, and so it is not a one-off—being taken from the public purse with the support of the government and the opposition and put into subsidising private health insurance for, predominantly, those people who live in wealthy Liberal electorates. That is the fundamental question we are dealing with in this piece of legislation.

Recent evidence does tell us that the sell-off of Medibank Private will lead to an increase in premiums. We need only look at recent history to see that this is what is occurring. Unlike the government’s rhetoric—their claim that this will lead to a limit on premium increases—health commentators who have been discussing this legislation point out that this is simply not the case. The President of the Australian Medical Association pointed out in the Canberra Times in September that ‘the sale of Medibank Private will drive up premiums as the new owner sought to maximise returns to shareholders’. We saw the Community and Public Sector Union and the Save Medicare Alliance in their joint submission to the Senate inquiry also arguing that private ownership of Medibank Private would increase premiums. And, let me remind you again, every time premiums increase so does the amount of public funds being spent on subsidising private insurance rather than going into our public health system, where it is desperately needed. Recent evidence tells us that will occur.

Over the last five years we have seen this happening. In 2002 there was an average rise in private health insurance premiums of 6.9 per cent. The Minister for Health and Ageing at the time, Senator Patterson, ‘warned’ in the Canberra Times that any attempt by health funds to raise premiums the following year would be ‘met with scepticism’—not a terribly successful warning given that in the next year, 2003, there was a 7.4 per cent rise in premiums. It was not just a rise in premiums but a rise in the amount of public funding being used to support this private health insurance industry rather than being invested in our public healthcare system.

In the next year, 2004, there was another increase. The average increase then was 7.6 per cent—another increase not just in premiums for people but also of public funds, a privatisation of public funds, our health budget going away from public taxpayers into the hands of the private insurance companies running this sector. In 2005 it was the same thing again: a 7.9 per cent increase in premiums—another increase in public funds being transferred from the public purse to the pockets of predominantly wealthier Australians who take out private health insurance. This year we have had a rise again—five years in a row. It was 5.7 per cent this time. The evidence tells us that premiums are going up and up and up. The sale of Medibank Private will push premiums up, and every time premiums get pushed up public funds are transferred out of our taxpayers’ hands and into the pockets of those people who take out private health insurance in this country.

Total up those five years of increases that I have just outlined. That is a 35.5 per cent increase in private health insurance premiums over those five years! A 35.5 per cent increase in premiums! And what goes along with that: a massive transfer of public funds away from taxpayers into the pockets of those people who buy private health insurance, subsidising the insurance industry. That is not delivering us the public health services and outcomes that people in the community want. In the lead-up to the last federal election I attended several meetings with the ACTU and with a range of health unions. Health economists across this nation were unanimous in their acknowledgement of the inefficiency that exists in the private health insurance rebate and in the way it does not deliver improved public health outcomes. How many more health economists do we need to come out and say that this does not work before the government and the opposition recognise the problem?

This is a fundamental social justice issue. We have had the new leader of the Labor Party write prolifically about the importance of social justice, and of course the Greens have welcomed that. The concept of social justice is fundamental not just to the Greens and our philosophy but also to the development of the Labor Party. It is a fundamental concept about looking after those people in our community who need access to health services through our public health system. If there is that genuine commitment to social justice then I challenge the new Leader of the Opposition to put his money where his mouth is. Let us see a commitment from the opposition. There is over $3 billion there every year—easy money. If you want to support our public health system, there is the money—you do not need to look any further; it is the elephant in the lounge room—over $3 billion, every year. Take that money and invest it in our public health services and the social justice outcomes that you will get by doing that are the very things that people in this community have been crying out for: that investment in health services. Don’t just continue with the rhetoric of believing and supporting the public healthcare system. Show us that prioritisation of public health care by taking that funding and investing it in the place where it can deliver the very best public health outcomes in this community—that is, in our public health system. People have been asked which healthcare system they use, and surveys have found that in cases of emergencies, regardless of whether or not people have private health insurance, they turn to their public hospital and to the public healthcare system to ensure that they get proper care.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics private health insurance data found that:

In 2004-05 20% of people with private hospital insurance who were admitted to hospital in the previous 12 months reported their most recent admission had been as a public (Medicare) patient.

So, regardless of whether people have private health insurance, when there is an emergency and they need health care, they recognise that it is through the public healthcare system that they are able to get that support.

Prue Power, Executive Director of the Australian Healthcare Association, said just last month:

It is important to understand that public hospitals treat the most-complex cases and provide most emergency treatment, while private hospitals tend to focus on less-complex elective procedures.

If we want to ensure that people are able to get access to the emergency treatment that is provided by our public healthcare system, we need to invest in it. There is over $3 billion every year waiting to be invested, waiting to be spent, in our public healthcare system. That is my challenge today to the new Leader and the new Deputy Leader of the Labor Party: let us see whether you have a genuine commitment to investing in and prioritising public health care in this country. That is the position of the Greens. That is the position that I have argued in here for the last 4½ years and that I will continue to argue. It is not just me; it is the health economists around the country who recognise that our public system is the best way to ensure that all Australians, regardless of their capacity to pay, have access to quality health care. In order to ensure that those Australians have access to that care, we need to see an investment of public funding, and there is $3 billion there every year that can be injected into ensuring that we have a quality system.

I indicated that the Greens have done some analysis on this issue in terms of the uptake of private health insurance. It was based on data from a Roy Morgan survey of over 50,000 people. It showed that across Australia the private health insurance rebate means that residents of rural, remote and outer suburban electorates are effectively subsidising the insurance of those people living in wealthy Liberal-held electorates. Residents of Labor-held electorates lose out. Those seats held by the National Party, interestingly, are the worst off. Yet we continue to see both of these parties supporting their own constituents, subsidising the private health insurance that is taken out by the people who live in the electorates held by Tony Abbott and others in the Liberal Party. They are the facts on the ground. The private health insurance rebate is a redistribution of wealth away from those people who contribute across-the-board through their taxation into the pockets of those wealthy insurers. This is something that needs to be turned around. The challenge today is to the opposition: don’t just oppose this bill—that is an obvious one—take up the challenge of ensuring that we have a quality public healthcare system across the board. Join the Greens in saying there is over $3 billion there every year, let us invest it in the healthcare system in this country to deliver the best outcomes, most equitably and most fairly to all Australians regardless of their capacity to pay. Let us put that funding where it is most needed: in our public healthcare system, not in the pockets of the private health insurance industry.